Chief of Staff to President Bola Tinubu and former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, on Monday toured the N21 billion new Presidential Clinic constructed by the immediate past administration of Muhammadu Buhari, last year.
The facility, located within the precincts of Aso Rock Presidential Villa, Abuja and equipped with state-of-the-art facilities, is intended to stem medical tourism by the first family and other senior officials of the government, the government said.
Speaking after his tour of the clinic, Gbajabiamila rated the facilities high stating that the budget allocated to the project was well utilized.
Asked about his impression of the facility, Gbajabiamila said “there’s been a lot of talk about this clinic, not just today, even when I was in the National Assembly as Speaker and so I thought, having been here a few months, let’s have a look and see exactly what is going on.
“I have seen, I am very impressed and I’m sure you are as well because you went around with me. This is a clinic like anywhere in the world, you will find, the standard is very high. The equipment is of world class. From my understanding, there’s some equipment that you wouldn’t even find in too many places all over the world.
“So, as far as clinics go, in terms of equipment, in terms of what they can do, in terms of, I mean, I’ve just been lectured about kidney transplant now from one of the best. There’s a Cath. Lab. that’s world class and so many other things.
“There’s an equipment they called C-ARM, this gladdens my heart that at least when we were appropriating money in the House of Representatives as Speaker, I can see where the money has gone to
“So it’s for them to dot the I’s and cross the T’s and put finishing touches and I think we’ll be proud to say that we have a clinic of international standard like this one.”
Dr. Jane Ifechukwu, Chairman, Clinical Services, who was asked what the CoS meant by dotting the ‘I’s’ and crossing the ‘T’s’ explained that from where the last administration stopped; “everything is in place. But they wanted this administration to drive the process-that was the language.
“We’ve carried our principals along, it’s for them to give us a go-ahead. What we have here is skeletal, just the way we were having the Villa Clinic. That’s what we do here. But once we dot the I’s, we can’t take decisions on our own, they give us the go-ahead and we are good to go.”
